When the News Makes the Future Feel Frightening

How to care about climate change without becoming overwhelmed by it

By Lydia@Lydia.com

Wildfires burning across familiar landscapes.

Flooded streets.

Another heatwave.

Drought.

A photograph of a disappearing glacier.

Another headline warning that temperatures have broken another record.

It can sometimes feel as though we carry the problems of the entire planet around in our pockets.

We wake up, reach for our phones—and before breakfast we can be looking at a disaster thousands of miles away.

For some people, the response is sadness.

For others, anger.

And increasingly, researchers are studying another response:

climate anxiety.

But there is something unusual about this particular form of anxiety.

The thing we are worried about is real.

So how do we care about what is happening without becoming overwhelmed by it?

Climate anxiety doesn't mean there is something wrong with you

Climate anxiety—sometimes called eco-anxiety or climate distress—is generally used to describe fear, worry and uncertainty associated with climate change and its consequences.

Importantly, climate anxiety is not itself a recognized mental-health diagnosis.

As psychologists interviewed by The Independent explain, it describes the subject and context of someone's distress rather than a distinct psychiatric disorder.

That distinction matters.

If someone worries about a completely imaginary danger, we may want to help them understand that the threat is unlikely.

Climate change presents a different psychological problem.

Wildfires happen.

Floods happen.

Heatwaves happen.

Landscapes really are changing.

The World Health Organization recognizes climate change as a growing threat to mental health and psychosocial wellbeing, with potential effects ranging from emotional distress and anxiety to grief and more serious mental-health consequences.

So feeling concerned doesn't necessarily mean we are worrying too much.

Sometimes anxiety is evidence that we are paying attention.

The more useful question is:

Can we carry that concern without allowing it to take over our lives?

Younger people are carrying a particular burden

One of the most important studies of climate anxiety surveyed 10,000 young people aged 16 to 25 across ten countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, India, Brazil, Nigeria and the Philippines.

More than 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.

That is significant.

Young adults face a particular psychological difficulty because climate change isn't something they can place comfortably in the distant future.

It is part of the future they expect to inhabit.

Questions about career, where to live, whether to buy a home and even whether to have children can become entangled with questions about climate.

Recent American Psychological Association reporting describes psychologists encountering exactly these concerns among young people, including uncertainty about where it will be safe to live and whether having children feels responsible.

But climate worry doesn't belong exclusively to the young.

It simply changes shape as we age.

Different generations, different worries

A woman in her twenties may wonder what the world will look like when she is sixty.

A mother may worry about the environment her children will inherit.

Someone living in a wildfire-prone region may wonder whether her home will remain insurable.

A farmer may worry about rainfall.

A homeowner near the coast may think about flooding.

And an older woman may notice environmental changes simply because she possesses something younger people don't:

a long memory.

She remembers colder winters.

A lake with more water.

Summers that didn't feel quite like this.

Birds or insects that once seemed commonplace.

A garden that behaved differently.

Sometimes environmental change isn't experienced through graphs or scientific reports.

It is experienced through memory.

When home no longer feels quite like home

Researchers have a particularly evocative word for this experience:

solastalgia.

The concept was developed to describe distress associated with environmental change occurring in a place someone knows and loves.

It has sometimes been described as a kind of homesickness experienced while still at home.

The Independent gives a wonderfully ordinary example.

Someone looks at a park and notices that grass which was once green is now brown.

Nothing catastrophic has happened in that particular moment.

But the familiar landscape suddenly feels different.

And that difference can provoke grief.

Perhaps you've experienced something similar.

Returning to a childhood landscape altered by fire.

Watching a familiar river run unusually low.

Seeing trees struggling through another drought.

Noticing that the seasons no longer seem to arrive quite when you remember them.

These emotions aren't necessarily fear.

Sometimes they are closer to mourning.

There is another problem: the news never stops

Previous generations experienced environmental disasters too.

What they didn't have was a device capable of delivering photographs and video of almost every disaster on Earth continuously throughout the day.

This changes the psychological equation.

There is an important difference between:

being informed

and

being continuously exposed.

The Independent's experts recommend choosing a small number of reliable news sources, checking them at deliberate times and avoiding climate news immediately before sleep.

Once we understand the essential facts about a disaster, consuming another twenty accounts of the same event may add very little knowledge while substantially increasing emotional distress.

That seems like useful advice well beyond climate change.

Our brains were not designed to absorb the suffering of eight billion people in real time.

Knowing when to put the phone down is not ignorance.

Sometimes it is simply a boundary.

Doomscrolling can masquerade as responsibility

There is an uncomfortable reason we sometimes keep reading.

Stopping can feel irresponsible.

If something terrible is happening, shouldn't we pay attention?

Perhaps.

But attention and endless exposure are different things.

Reading another ten stories about a wildfire does not necessarily help the people affected by it.

Watching another hour of frightening footage does not necessarily make us better informed.

And becoming so overwhelmed that we disengage entirely helps nobody.

A more sustainable relationship with news might look something like this:

Choose trustworthy sources.

Understand what is happening.

Decide whether there is anything useful you can do.

Then return to your life.

That last step is important.

Denial and doomism are surprisingly similar

At first glance, climate denial and climate doomism seem like opposites.

One says:

There isn't really a serious problem.

The other says:

The problem is so enormous that nothing we do can possibly matter.

But psychologically they can arrive at the same destination.

Inaction.

The Independent's experts argue for a position between the two: recognizing the seriousness of climate change without surrendering our capacity to influence what happens next—or our capacity to enjoy the life we have now.

That middle ground is harder.

It requires us to tolerate uncertainty.

We cannot promise ourselves that everything will turn out perfectly.

But neither can we know that everything will turn out disastrously.

The future has never offered either guarantee.

Action can be an antidote to helplessness

One of the more encouraging directions in psychological research concerns meaning-focused coping.

Rather than trying to eliminate uncomfortable feelings, people can sometimes use concern as information:

This matters to me.

That feeling can then be connected to meaningful action.

APA reporting on climate anxiety describes psychologists exploring how meaning-focused coping can transform distress into a greater sense of purpose and constructive engagement.

The action doesn't have to be heroic.

Perhaps you reduce household energy use.

Plant trees.

Support a local conservation project.

Vote according to your priorities.

Volunteer.

Talk with neighbours about preparing for extreme weather.

Donate to an organization whose work you trust.

Teach children to appreciate nature.

Or simply make your household better prepared for heat, storms or flooding.

None of these actions solves climate change individually.

That isn't the point.

They replace:

“There is nothing I can do.”

with:

“There is something I can do.”

And psychologically, those are very different places to live.

Community matters too

Climate resilience isn't purely an individual matter.

WHO specifically recommends community-based approaches as part of responding to the mental-health and psychosocial consequences of climate change.

That makes intuitive sense.

During heatwaves, someone checks on an elderly neighbour.

After storms, people clear fallen branches together.

During power failures, neighbours share information.

After floods and fires, communities rebuild.

Preparedness therefore isn't only about generators, insurance or emergency supplies.

It is also about knowing people.

The neighbour whose phone number you have.

The friend who would offer a spare room.

The person you would check on—and who would check on you.

Perhaps social connection is part of climate resilience too.

Don't forget to notice what is still beautiful

There is another danger in becoming consumed by environmental loss.

We can become so focused on what might disappear that we stop noticing what remains.

The tree outside the window.

Rain after weeks of dry weather.

Birds arriving in spring.

A cold morning.

The smell of soil after a storm.

The ocean.

A garden.

A walk through the woods.

Protecting ourselves psychologically doesn't require pretending environmental problems don't exist.

It means allowing ourselves to experience something other than fear about them.

Grief and appreciation can coexist.

So can concern and joy.

You are still allowed to enjoy your life

This may sound almost trivial.

It isn't.

People experiencing climate anxiety can sometimes feel guilty about ordinary pleasures.

How can I enjoy myself when terrible things are happening?

But there have always been terrible things happening somewhere.

A psychologically sustainable life cannot require continuous suffering in sympathy with every problem in the world.

The climate psychologists interviewed by The Independent make this point rather beautifully: people can consciously take time away, enjoy an evening at home, see friends and continue living while still caring deeply about the future.

Joy is not denial.

Rest is not indifference.

And enjoying today's world doesn't mean you don't care about tomorrow's.

When worry becomes something more

There is nevertheless an important dividing line.

Concern becomes more problematic when it begins preventing someone from living normally.

If climate-related thoughts repeatedly interfere with sleep, work, relationships or everyday functioning—or create persistent feelings of hopelessness—then the issue may deserve more attention.

The goal isn't necessarily to persuade someone that her concerns are unfounded.

They may not be.

The goal is to help her develop a way of carrying those concerns that leaves room for the rest of life.

Talking with friends can help.

Community groups can help.

For some people, speaking with a qualified mental-health professional may also be useful.

Lydia's™ Take

Perhaps one of the hardest things about living now is that we know so much.

A wildfire thousands of miles away can appear on our phone within minutes.

We can watch glaciers retreat.

See floods happening almost live.

Read predictions about decades we haven't lived yet.

Awareness is valuable.

But awareness without boundaries can become overwhelming.

We don't have to choose between pretending everything is fine and believing everything is doomed.

There is another position.

Pay attention.

Understand the problem.

Do what you reasonably can.

Stay connected to other people.

Then put the phone down.

Go outside.

Call a friend.

Cook dinner.

Plant something.

Watch the sunset.

Laugh.

Caring about the future does not require being frightened every hour of the present.

You can worry about tomorrow and still enjoy tonight.

You can acknowledge what is being lost while protecting your ability to notice what remains beautiful.

Hope doesn't require certainty that everything will be fine.

Sometimes hope simply means believing that what we do next still matters.

Editorial Note

This article is intended for general educational and informational purposes and does not constitute medical or mental-health advice. Climate-related concern is not itself a mental-health diagnosis. Persistent anxiety, hopelessness or distress that significantly interferes with sleep, work, relationships or everyday functioning may warrant discussion with a qualified healthcare or mental-health professional.